The Pros And Cons Of The First Amendment

The First Amendment guarantees “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the press.” The freedom of speech, press, and religion have been pillars of the United States and other Democratic nations who knew the need to have these rights guaranteed. This idea was a major element of the Enlightenment period, the thoughts of John Locke, Jean Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Voltaire would be incorporated into the Constitution which included Freedom of Speech as a Human Right. Schenck v United States rules that the First Amendment stands for all speech as long as it doesn’t cause a “Clear and Present Danger.” No laws have been placed to decrease opinion. Despite
A person brought in to speak, approved by the board of trustees, being suppressed because of his political views and the potential of what he was going to say. You can agree or disagree with Milo’s views, they are polarizing, but I do not believe anyone could defend the actions of the protesters actively stopping his ability to speak. This story was picked up by news channels across the country, I remember it being shown, live on Fox, MSNBC, and CNN and being shown many times as a hotbed for discussion. These channels do not agree often, but these protests turned riots were all seen as an “Attack on Free Speech.” It wasn’t the man they are doing it to, it was the principle of the action. There is a common metaphor that is used to describe cases like this, “The Slippery Slope,” which states that if you let a seemingly insignificant action happen it can and will lead to a more significant action down the road. This was the significant action, violence against an opinion, which leaves me to ask the question where did it start and how did we let it get so bad? What is the cause of the highly partisan nature of our discussions based on opinion? Let’s first start with what opinion